The now forcibly retired blog about: Photography, Life and the occasional UFO...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Sarah Stolfa's (non-deadpan) Regulars

This article (brought to my attention last November on Christian Patterson's blog) proclaimed last year the year of the deadpan portrait, not that I have anything against contemplative or self reflective portraits, mind you- in fact, some of the work mentioned in the article (ie- Sander, Bey...) was a bit over reaching. But I have gotten a tad tired of subjects who repeatedly look like they need to be poked with a stick just to see if they're capable of human thought. So I began perusing the archives as to recent antidotes and came upon Sarah Stolfa's Regulars, bar portraits of singular character and integrity. Was therefore rather surprised to find a review from '05 that described her work as- deadpan! Hhmmm... Perhaps that term could best describe her technique (sit, look up, flash)- as opposed to the actual results, which I guess in '08 could be described as positively dynamic, next to the walking dead approach we've become accustomed to of late.